I looked again at the latch and leveled it up with my hand. I was then able to release the tongue of the latch, and the gate opened.
“We got it now, Papa!” answered Caroline, and Sam Perry waved his hand in return and turned his attention back to his hogs. “I sure do thank you, Mister Paul Logan,” Caroline said, picking up her basket.
“You’re welcome,” I said. “But tell me something.”
“What’s that?”
“Why do you always address me by my full name?”
Caroline smiled at me without any hint of shyness. “’Cause I likes the way it sounds. Always did like that name Paul. It just sounds nice, don’t ya think?” She didn’t wait for an answer as she went into the chicken pen. “You come on wit’ me and see some of our layin’ hens. And be sure and close that gate behind ya so’s these chickens don’t get out. The younguns already fed ’em, so it’s their beddin’ time now, but we got some hens that lay late, so I gotta check for eggs.”
I did as I was told and followed Caroline through the yard and into the henhouse.
“S’pose you ’bout ready t’ be quit of us and all our family,” Caroline teased as she went about checking under the hens. “There’s sure a lot of us.”
“No, actually, I’ve enjoyed being here. I haven’t seen my own family in some time, so this has been a good day for me. One thing, though. It seems to me your mother doesn’t much care for me.”
Caroline brushed away my comment with a wave of her hand, as if fanning away a fly. “Ah, don’t you mind Mama. She ain’t meant no harm. It’s just that she done had a hard life and it done got into her soul. Ain’t nothin’ you done.”
“But there’s something about me, isn’t there, that made her that way toward me?”
Caroline was more open than I had expected her to be. She looked straight into my eyes when she answered. “Nothin’ more’n the fact you lookin’ like a white man.”
I gazed at her in silence.
“That there, that’s what it is,” she said, and turned back to gathering her eggs.
“But didn’t your daddy tell her about me? About me coming to dinner?”
“Oh, he told her, all right. He done told her he invited Mister Paul Logan, but that’s all. He didn’t tell her anythin’ ’bout what ya look like. Ain’t said nothin’ ’bout you lookin’ near white. He shoulda done told her that, knowin’ how Mama is, but he ain’t, so my mama ain’t ’spected you t’ be lookin’ like ya do, and it took her by surprise a bit. When she done seen ya, other things come to her mind.”
“Other things?”
Caroline diligently continued to gather her eggs. “Things ’bout when she was born. Things ’bout when she was a baby. Things ’bout slavery days.”
“Now, what could seeing me have to do with that? Certainly I’m not the first near-to-white-looking person she’s seen.”
“Not sittin’ at her table,” Caroline retorted. She stopped and fixed her deep brown eyes on mine. “You see, t’ my mama ya might’s well be white. That there’s what she sees, and she can’t get over that.”
“Well, I’m not white,” I said.
“Partly you are. Anybody can see that. But that don’t matter. Part of it you are, my mama done seen it.” Caroline’s eyes were still fixed on me. “She done seen that and not nothin’ much else. She done seen that there man called hisself her master when she seen ya, and she done seen the white woman that was his wife too.” She turned from me and walked on.
“Well . . . I’m not them,” I said softly.
Caroline glanced back. “Course you ain’t. But Mama, she ain’t thinkin’ on that. She thinkin’ on the folks takin’ away her name.”
I watched her without words.
Caroline continued on with her talk, gathering eggs all the while. “Ya see, my mama was a baby only a week old when she found her name gone.”
“Her name gone?” I followed her again. “How?”
“The white folks done took it,” answered Caroline matter-of-factly.
“Took it?” I questioned. “A name?”
“That’s right. Just took her name. Ya see, this here’s how it was. My mama was born into slavery belongin’ t’ some white folks by the name of Means. Now, my grandmama Rose, she done picked out a name for my mama even ’fore my mama was born, and that name she done give to my mama was Rachel. My grandmama Rose, she done took pride in that name ’cause that there was the name her mama done held. So come the day my mama was born, my grandmama Rose, she give my mama that name of Rachel, and that was the way everybody was thinkin’ of her, the name when she got born, just simply that. Rachel.”